When Kelli Dillion was 24, a surgeon at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla decided that she was not fit to be a parent and intentionally sterilized her without her consent.
She sought medical attention for an abnormal pap smear and told the doctor that should he find cancerous cells, he could operate, but she knew something was wrong after the procedure.
In 2001, Dillon was one of 148 women incarcerated and living inside California’s state prisons who experienced medical abuse in the form of forced tubal ligations or total hysterectomies without their knowledge or consent and without required state approvals
Justice Now, an Oakland-based social justice legal advocacy organization, worked and fought the prison alongside Kelli to help her gain access to her medical records. Without these records she would never have been informed of this violation.
Dillon’s personal story and work, along with the efforts of Justice Now, were the subject of the 2020 film, Belly of the Beast
Source: Ray Levy Uyeda. “How Organizers Are Fighting an American Legacy of Forced Sterilization.” YES! Magazine, YES! Magazine, 8 Feb. 2021, www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2021/02/08/united-states-forced-sterilization-women. Accessed 26 Apr. 2023.
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